Seeing Through Time
by CodeAires
Summary: Betty loved Simon with all of her heart. Even a thousand years later, she still can't get over how a crown and a tiara ruined their chances at happiness. Now that her daughter has abandoned her as well, all she can do is read through old diaries and wonder why death won't save her from her loneliness and endless Princelust.


**SEEING THROUGH TIME**

I called her Princess, because that's what he always called me. She was a spitting image of her father, and just as impossibly full of ingenuities as he was. Her eyes would light up every time she entered the laboratory, eager to see what Mommy was working on, just like her Father. It's a tragic shame that she would never know him like I knew him. It was an even bigger shame that she couldn't have seen me before I began to change into the monstrosity that is a cold, old woman with a lonely, hollow heart.

The parasitic organ serves no use, other than making me lust for the young men within this clustered land. This hunger for a prince, this drive for a companion is a shameful legacy I will leave behind for Princess. She only has memories of her mother casting spells and screeching out into darkness, filled with delusions that some man, or something resembling a man, would want my frozen hands to touch theirs, would want my kiss to make them numb, and would want my futile attempts at love to mortify them into never loving again. Princess must have thought that her mother was possessed by evil spirits, or maybe she thought I wasn't even human at all.

Perhaps that's why she left me behind like I left her father behind so many centuries ago.

My condition, which has worsened with time, has sadly erased many of my memories of what the world used to be. What I can remember is usually brought forth in the form of distorted fragments, much like a fever dream or a cracked looking glass. Most of what I do know about my own past comes not from these static memories, but from artifacts of the Old World themselves – devices that New World folk would have no use for, simply because they were not taught how to use them. Every now and again, when I'm feeling particularly lonely or just need an entertaining read, I head down to a special room in this castle where I keep all the clues of what I used to be. Old diaries, pictures, letters, and newspaper clippings tell a rather sad story, one that I can only assume happened to me somewhere along the way.

Before the Old World perished, about a millennium or so ago, a girl named Dragica Jelisaveta Abramovic was born in a prison. She was the bastard child of two Old World villages known as the Bosnians and the Serbians. There was a war between them and one tried to control the other, or something along those lines. This is not important to my story, as she was later adopted by a new family and taken to another land that I believe was called USSR. I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but this land was much larger and colder. Little Dragica was used to being out in the freezing cold as a child. She felt at home there. She loved winter more than any other season. The snow and ice was her own little kingdom, where she could rule over her snowman subjects. This girl obviously had quite an imagination.

Some time later, she moved to another land that was full of strange people and more opportunities, known to locals as UK – is that pronounced "Ooo-kay"? Sounds quite a bit like "Ooo", doesn't it? I think that Dragica moved to this strange land to further her studies, as she was a bright young aspiring scientist. While at University, she met a young antiquarian who introduced himself as Simon.

The man I lost. Simon Petrikov.

I do remember a few things from this point in time. Some little details I remember is that he had long brown hair and deep blue eyes beset with thick-rimmed glasses. Like me, he had spent some time living in this "USSR" land with his father, though he told me that he was born in "UK" to a mother native of that land. According to one of my diaries, Simon asked me for my name the first time we had lunch together on campus, and I wasn't sure what to tell him. My adoptive parents called me Beta, the shortened form of Lizaveta, which was USSR-ian for my middle name, Jelisaveta.

"Well, I can't call you Beta. That means you would always be coming in second!" he laughed.

"Well my real first name is actually Dragica…"

"Dragica sounds like an evil old queen running around casting spells on people!" he said with another stream of little chuckles.

"Well it's either Dragica or Lizaveta, or Beta-"

"Wait…Lizaveta was my nanny's name while living in Moscow. It's Elizabeth in English…how about Betty? That's kind of like Beta, but with no inferior connotations"

"Betty. I like that"

As Betty, my life was rather romantic and easy-going. Simon was my first love and the man who taught me everything about passion and desire. He was rough, yet tender at the same time, and was always treated me as an equal. To him, I was royalty. I would call him Prince, and he would call me Princess, and our kingdom was the University's biochemistry laboratory. As mentioned, my memory is very fragmented, but I do remember a few bits of our time together, like how we moved into an old house together, and of one trip Simon took to "Scandinavia" without me, where he stayed away for about two weeks. He was invited to be a part of his father's expedition team in northern Sweden, looking for valuable items to sell to museums.

Upon his return, he presented a few of the items his father had let him hold onto for the time being. He dragged a rather large bag into our bedroom with some fairly predictable items, like art and figurines, and some sort of sword, which looked too rusted to be of any value. However, there was another item that I found both puzzling and intriguing at the same time.

"Is that a crown?" I asked

"Yes! I found this one myself inside of the remains of an abandoned chapel. I wonder which member of the Swedish monarchy was clumsy enough to leave this baby behind."

The crown was fairly large, made of brass, and was decorated with rubies. It didn't even look like the sort of crown that a monarch would actually wear – the craftsmanship was too poor, and it being made of brass instead of gold gave me a bad hunch about its value.

"Simon, this is clearly worthless! No wonder your father let you have it"

"The rubies are real, I can tell that much. It is pretty silly looking though, like a crown some old wizard would wear in a kid's movie"

Simon put the crown on his head and began prancing around the room.

"Look at me! I'm Olgar, King of the Wizard Trolls! Rah rah rah!"

We both burst out laughing, but the laughter wouldn't last that long. Just a few minutes later, his mood grew very sullen, which was atypical for the Simon I knew. Even during the most stressful of times, he kept a cheerful demeanor. He still had the crown upon his head, pacing back and forth on our balcony, mumbling some kind of incoherent words to himself. What happened next was the beginning of the end of my life.

"Simon, are you okay?"

Those four words will haunt me forever. Just as they left my lips, Simon's head quickly jerked upwards, and his eyes…his beautiful blue eyes had turned white, flashing an incandescent light that nearly blinded me. His teeth were grinding, and a pained grunt left his throat.

"What do you want, bitch? Can't you see I'm tending to my people?"

My curiosity had turned to fear, and then had turned to blind rage upon hearing him speak. I knew there was something wrong with that crown! It was clearly possessed by evil spirits or contained some kind of poison that was controlling his mind. Swallowing hard, I tried to grab the crown from his head.

"You are taking that crown off right now! I don't like what it's doing to you"

"ARE YOU TRYING TO USURP ME? NEVER"

"What are you even talking about, Simon? Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"USURPER! YOU WILL NEVER TAKE ME!"

His white eyes glowed even brighter as he lunged at me like a wild animal. I grabbed the crown and threw it off of the balcony, but not before he wrestled me to the floor. I was kicking him and screaming for help, but he put his hands around my throat and began to choke. In that moment, I thought I was going to die at the hands of the only man I ever loved.

"You fucking bitch! You worthless, god damned thankless bitch! You…you…"

Suddenly, his eyes lost their whiteness and faded back to their normal shade of blue. After panting from breathlessness, he sat up in shock, trembling.

"Oh my god, what did I-"

Before he had a chance to do anything else, I ran down the stairs to our house and then out the front door. He begged me to come back, saying that the "crown made him do it", but terror overcame me to the point where I didn't even care anymore. I had looked into the eyes of the devil, and I knew that Simon was possessed, and there was no way I would ever let him try to kill me again.

It was a freezing cold night. I had nowhere else to go, so I took refuge inside of a train station, crying myself to sleep. Simon had left several messages on my mobile telephone, telling me he was sorry and that the crown would be "destroyed", but I didn't believe him one bit. Eventually, I became so frightened of him that just a week later, after taking my valued belongings from the house, I called my parents and asked that they let me come back to my mother country. They agreed, and I left for USSR, never to see Simon again.

That doesn't mean that we left each other behind, though. I was still carrying part of him with me, a part of himself that he would never know of. Just three weeks after my return to USSR, I discovered that I was pregnant. There was nothing else that I could do but hide the pregnancy from my parents, but when my belly grew too big to be hidden, I told the truth to my mother. While she felt sorry for me, she knew that my father would be furious that I had not waited until marriage. She sent me to live in a halfway house, some 40 miles north of my home town, where I was treated as little more than a dog. The women there were neglected and abused, and many of them miscarried their children.

One night, after being beaten by the headmistress for not completing a simple errand, I ran away from the halfway house. I wandered deep into the woods with nothing but a knapsack and a coat with frayed sleeves. I had lost my chance at a college diploma, lost the man that I loved, and the adoptive parents who had raised me for as long as I could remember turned their back on me, all because I was carrying this child. This is where my memories start to get fuzzy again, so I have to resort to one of my diaries to know exactly what happened next – all I know is that I was never the same after that point, either. It was written:

_Taking shelter in an abandoned cabin. Looking at this tiara and wondering what the fuck I was thinking. I must be crazy. No, I KNOW I'm going to be crazy like Simon is crazy now. This is it. I can only hope that my baby won't be hurt the way that Simon tried to hurt me. I will kill her if I'm not being watched, but who is going to watch me?_

_Two days ago I ran away from Sveta's with whatever I could carry on my back. Being seven months pregnant, that isn't really much. I went really deep into the woods and passed out. When I woke up, my skin was turning blue and I just knew that I would die from hypothermia. Then, out of nowhere, I saw something shimmering under the stars. It was a tiara. A fucking tiara. Gold, with rubies, like that awful crown Simon found. I crawled over to it, taking a better look. I knew this was my fate to try it on. I was so cold and hungry and mentally wounded that it didn't matter if I turned into a monster anymore._

_I put the crown on my head. Suddenly, I wasn't cold. Suddenly, I saw all kinds of hideous things. Demons, angels, ghosts, howling wolves, gnashing, ugly beasts ripping the flesh off of one another. My god, is this was Simon saw? Is this what drove him crazy? Even after I took off the tiara, I still saw these horrid things. I kept hearing these voices telling me I was a queen. The queen of what? Lonliness? I have nothing except the daughter in my belly now. I am going crazy. I know it. I might die from craziness. Something has to give, and if it's me, my daughter will go down as well._

So apparently, whatever turned Simon had turned me as well. Suddenly, I began to age at a rapid pace. By the time I gave birth to Princess, my hair was already white. My eyebrows became bushy and my skin was turning blue. My daughter, for better or for worse, had the same bluish hue that I had. She had been affected by the crown while in my womb, so we were becoming the same creature. For months I traveled with Princess, looking for food and someone who would help a strange looking woman in need. Years passed, and there was little more than handouts and awkward stares…

And then the war came. The war destroyed everything.

Reading through old newspapers and diaries gives me an idea of what this "mushroom war" was like, and it was literally the worst thing to ever happen to the world. Nearly every other human perished. The tiara spared me from death, and Princess was spared as well, so we were able to scavenge for food and other goods from destroyed buildings. We lived like animals, almost totally feral, and the few humans we encountered lived like this as well. In a diary entry, I mention how I found one child dying of radiation sickness. His name was Marshall and he told me he had a sister, but they had "been separated". I cared for him until sickness consumed his body, and he died in my arms. Princess cried all night. Apparently, I did, too.

Centuries passed. I grew into a sorceress, and my daughter eventually became her own woman. Now in adulthood, she wanted to become a doctor, but I wouldn't let her. She was to stay in this castle and help me kidnap princes. No daughter of mine was going to get what had been robbed of me so long ago. I never got my degree. Neither would she. My anger and bitterness caused me to lash out at her, and after one particularly nasty fight, she fled the castle and hasn't contacted me since.

I am now completely, totally alone. There is nothing here to keep me company except for the many pet penguins I've taken in. Nobody visits. Nobody cares. There have been times I have screamed out into the night air, begging Glob or whatever is up there to just kill me. Looking back, I must have chosen to wear that tiara out of the hope that it would turn me into whatever Simon had become, and that one day we would find each other again and live together in shared insanity. Even though I fled from him, I never gave up on him. For all I know, he might still be somewhere out in this painful, cruel world. He might be a lonely old wizard of some kind, looking for princesses, like I'm looking for princes. It's a shame that we just can't go back to being one another's royalty again. Then I think of Princess, and wonder where she could be living now. Did she really become a doctor? Could she maybe find a cure for whatever has plagued me and her father?

These are all things I wonder and wish for. These are things I tell to the princess I keep in my dungeon. My heart drops every time I see them roll their eyes at me and beg to be released. Can't they understand why I'm doing this? Can't they look through my eyes, see through time as I have seen, and know why finding a partner is so important? I am running from the voices in my head. I am running from my poor decisions. I am running from immortality and endless isolation.

When will I ever be able to stop running? Never?


End file.
